


Hunger

by quantumvelvet



Category: Planescape: Torment
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-21 17:07:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17047181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quantumvelvet/pseuds/quantumvelvet
Summary: Everyone knows that succubi are creatures of hunger.  Not everyone knows that hunger can be a transformative force.





	Hunger

**Author's Note:**

  * For [melmillo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/melmillo/gifts).



There were certain expectations of the experience that paid the fee for a succubus's acceptance into the inner circle of such a fellowship as the Sensates. Fall-from-Grace had known as much before she had first decided to petition for entry. She had known, too, that expectation was not the same thing as requirement, not here in the ever growing, ever changing portion of the planes claimed by mortal beings. A devil could forge expectation and tradition into the closest thing to natural law that one might find in the outer planes, and for all their love of chaos there were countless demons scattered throughout the infinite layers of the Abyss that could be just as draconian, just as inflexible. But mortals? They could expect, but they could also be disappointed.

Or they could be delighted. Not all, but some. Enough. The ones she might truly wish to cultivate, who might truly live up to the ideals the faction claimed to cherish.

After all, was an anticipated experience ever as novel as one that surprised, that challenged expectation and demanded new insights, new reflection?

Not that she couldn't give exactly the experience that was expected of her, should she choose to. She had so many memories, accumulated over more centuries than she cared to number. Memories of teeth and tongue, of ragged breath and hot skin, of pleasure and pain and both commingled until no one, not even she, could tell which was which. Memories of hunger, raw and aching and soul-deep, hollowing her out until she felt as though pieces of her very essence were sloughing away to be consumed by the bottomless abyss within, a reflection of the tangled, chaotic planes that spawned her kind. Memories of satiety, of those brief instants in which that abyss felt as though it might some day be filled, as she drew away from glassy-eyed lovers whose continued pulse was the closest thing they would ever find to life.

She could give all of that and more, and the majority of those who visited her crystal would walk away sated, would find exactly what they were looking for. Exactly what they expected.

And she would have betrayed the very ideals that drew her to the faction, and disappointed those precious few who did not approach with expectations firmly set, certain they knew exactly what a succubus would pay to gain access to a fellowship that thrived on experience.

And so, when she finally sat down with the small silver crystal that would be the vessel for her shared memory, whole and polished and sharp edged, as clear as anything could be that was remembered and not experienced fresh, it wasn't to lust that she turned, or to hunger.

At least, not in the way that would be expected.

Even the air has weight here, has a solid rigidity that strains against each breath she draws, struggling to stay in its proscribed place and not be drawn into lungs that will twist it and change it and expel it again in a form that is ever so slightly different than it had been going in, ever so slightly wrong, as though the entire plane has been shifted half an atom to the left, because this is hell, or one of them, and hell abhors change. Change is chaos writ small, and there has been a war raging almost since existence began over whether or not chaos ought to be written at all. That war is far from this place, where devils walk clad in trappings of civility and law, because the pale shadows of order beloved by mortal beings amuse them. That war is immediate and unforgettable, waged every second of every hour of every day in her blood and bone, just one of the many small tortures that comes part and parcel with dwelling on such an inimical plane. It is familiar, like the weight of the air and the contempt of the devils, something she has lived with each and every one of the innumerable days since her mother had first walked away with her bond price.

It is familiar, and today will be the last day she will feel it. Today, she will win the wager that is the surest path to freedom, the wager her master, in his arrogance, was certain she had no chance at all to win when he had first agreed to it. After all, she was merely tanar'ri, and while baatezu may be inflexible, tanar'ri were forces of pure destruction – and even a rigid thing is better at innovation than a rampaging beast. And true, she had lost each contest they'd had so far. She 1sn't a master of spellwork, or art, or poetry. A base, unchanging creature of lust, he had called her upon the last failure.

And that had been the seed of an idea, one she's nurtured for months, years, fed on loathing and watered with the scraps of knowledge gleaned from those who petitioned her master for favours, secrets, magics new and ancient, all won at a cost far higher than any of those moral petitioners could have ever conceived of. They, too, are creatures of hunger, of lust for things far beyond their reach.

The contest starts, as it always does, in the central courtyard of her master's keep, the ground dusted with ash and scented with roses that reek of carrion beneath their initial sweetness. She ignores the demand that she begin, ignores the barely-concealed amusement born of contempt for a demon so stubborn and stupid as to still dream of freedom. In the middle of the courtyard, she sits, and opens a book, and begins to read, occasionally making a notation in the margins. Eventually, she hears her master shift irritably, robes rustling, and clear his throat. She ignores that too, turns the next page, and makes another notation in the margins, writing cramped and twisted into arcane symbols.

She hears his footfalls as he comes up alongside her, ignores them, and dampens the tip of her pen with her tongue, a kiss in miniature, one of a thousand she's laid upon the pages. She ignores him as he snatches the book from her hands, consumed with the lust for victory, for the knowledge of just what it is she thinks she's doing.

She ignores the thud of the book hitting the floor, and the louder thud of her master as he follows, pulling half of a reeking rose vine along with him. She can't quite ignore the thrill of victory in her veins – the transitive properties of lust-based consumption of vitality have not, to her knowledge, ever been explored before in quite this fashion.

She can't at all ignore the sudden convulsion in her throat as the collar that has held her trapped within this keep, save for the rare outing on her master's orders, falls away, and she sucks in her first free breath in more centuries than she can count. The air burns as she draws it in, struggling to break free of her lungs, fighting to avoid being transmuted as she has been as all things must be if they are to thrive. She takes another breath, thrilling at the ache of it, the ache of change, and rises finally, abandoning her book of nonsense notes and the slowly-disintegrating body of her master behind her. There is a portal within the basement of the keep to a city of doors, one she can access freely now. But first...first, there is a library of lore both arcane and mundane, and she is so very hungry...


End file.
